Department of Chemistry, faculty of Science and Arts Najran University Saudi Arabia

Email:-amool3366@yahoo.com

A highly sensitive, simpler, economical and faster visible spectrophotometric method has been established for determination of hydroquinone in some common cosmetics in Najran region. The method is based on using ammonium molybdate in acidic medium as an oxidizing agent for conversion of hydroquinone to p-benzoquinone. As a result of higher absorption of visible light by (MoV) producing from reduction of (MoVI). The effect of various parameters such as amount of oxidizing agent, temperature, and solvents has been studied upon the absorption of (MoV). Under optimum conditions, Beer’s law was obeyed in the range of 10-100ug/ml at 580nm using methanol as solvent with linear regression coefficient of 0.9999. The newly developed method has been successfully applied to diluted samples of various skin lightening creams for hydroquinone determination.